Did a laser beam weapon cause the collapse of the
World Trade Center? A physicist who worked on the
original infrared beam weapon has reason to believe
so.

More than five months after the sudden and total
collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC), the cause of
the towers' structural failure has yet to be properly
investigated and remains unexplained, according to
America's leading fire engineering experts.
As part of an on-going investigation into the
disaster, American Free Press has interviewed a German
physicist who believes a laser beam weapon, employing
infrared technology originally developed in the Soviet
Union, may have caused the collapse of the towers.

Unexplained Collapse

When the twin towers collapsed shortly after being
struck by airplanes on September 11, millions of
television viewers watched the apocalyptic scenario
unfold. As immense clouds of concrete dust rolled
across lower Manhattan, people around the world tried
to comprehend what they were seeing.
Nearly six months later, people are still trying to
understand exactly what caused the two tallest
buildings in the United States to completely crumble
into a pile of burning rubble. However, it now appears
likely that the federal government will not be
conducting an open and comprehensive inquiry and that
the most important questions surrounding the towers'
collapse may remain unanswered.
The destruction of the World Trade Center was the
first total collapse of a high-rise in the history of
the United States and the largest structural collapse
in recorded history. It resulted in the deaths of some
3,000 people, the second largest loss of life on
American soil  and the largest loss of firefighters
ever.

However, instead of conducting an immediate forensic
investigation into the causes of the disaster, the
Bush administration has allowed critical evidence to
be destroyed and now wants to limit the congressional
investigation  an investigation that has not yet
begun.

Bush Wants to Limit WTC Investigation

Recently both President George W. Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney personally intervened and asked
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (Dem. - S.D.) "to
limit the congressional investigation into the events
of Sept. 11," according to CNN.
Bush made the unusual request at a private meeting
with congressional leaders on January 29. He asked
that the House and Senate intelligence committees only
look into "the potential breakdowns among federal
agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks
to occur," rather than conduct a comprehensive
inquiry.

Cheney made a similar appeal to Daschle on Jan. 25.
"The vice president expressed the concern that a
review of what happened on September 11 would take
resources and personnel away from the effort in the
war on terrorism," Daschle said.
"I acknowledged that concern, and it is for that
reason that the Intelligence Committee is going to
begin this effort, trying to limit the scope and the
overall review of what happened," Daschle said.
Although the president and vice president told Daschle
they were worried a wide-reaching inquiry could
distract from the government's war on terrorism,
privately Democrats questioned why the White House
feared a broader investigation to determine possible
culpability.

A Non-Investigation

A forensic investigation into what actually caused the
buildings to collapse has not been opened and probably
never will because essential evidence, such as steel
from the building, was quickly recycled or dumped
rather then taken to a metallurgical laboratory to be
examined.

Fire Engineering magazine, the 125-year-old respected
journal of firefighting, which publishes technical
studies of major fires, recently criticized the WTC
investigation being run by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) as "a half-baked farce."
Fire Engineering said it "has good reason to believe
that the 'official investigation', blessed by FEMA and
run by the American Society of Civil Engineers, is a
half-baked farce, commandeered by political forces
whose primary interests lie far afield of full
disclosure."

Fire Engineering's editor, WiIliam A. Manning wrote in
the January issue, "respected members of the fire
protection engineering community are beginning to
raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged:
The structural damage from the planes and the
explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not
enough to bring down the towers."

Then What Did It?

There are numerous indicators that something other
than fuel fires caused the towers to collapse,
including:

the immense clouds of dust and apparent
disintegration of some 425,000 cubic yards of
concrete

the short duration and low temperature of the jet
fuel fires

the unexplained fire and collapse of 7 WTC, the
47-story Salomon Brothers Building

the fact that the rubble burned for more than three
months despite being constantly sprayed with water

the report from the medical examiner that many of
the dead had been "vaporized"

and the absence of any flight data from the planes'
"black boxes".

"Vaporized Victims"

Dr. Charles Hirsch, the chief medical examiner, told
grieving relatives in November that many bodies had
been "vaporized". Hirsch reportedly declined to be
interviewed. However, Dr. Michael Baden, the state's
chief forensic pathologist and a top expert in the
field, said in September that most bodies should be
identifiable because the fires had not reached the
3,200 degree (F), 30-minute level necessary to
incinerate a body.

"Recovered tissues will likely be identified," Baden
said, because "bodies are not cremated  or burnt
beyond the ability to be identified  in the type of
fire that occurred at the World Trade Center. The
cremation of a body requires a temperature of over
3000 degrees Fahrenheit for close to half an hour...
and that did not occur when the airplanes struck the
World Trade Center."

To put things in perspective, the temperature of a
normal house fire is about 1700 degrees (F); jet fuel
burns at a temperature a little lower than that. In a
normal house fire of 1700 degrees, the body is charred
on the outside but remains intact on the inside; it is
not reduced to ashes," he said.

Burning Dust

The rubble of the World Trade Center, which was a
steel and concrete construction, burned for more than
three months, quite unlike a normal fire, despite
having been sprayed with a nearly constant jet of
water. The fires were only reported extinguished on
December 19.

The television evangelist Dr. Robert Schuller visited
the ruins and said that there "was not a single block
of concrete in that rubble," suggesting that the
nearly 425,000 cubic yards of concrete had
disintegrated into dust.

Television viewers saw the immense amounts of dust,
described by one observer "as if some high-energy
disintegration beam or laser had been focused on the
towers, and pulverized the concrete into minute
particles of ash and dust."

Directed-Energy Weapons

A former East German physicist who studied Soviet
infrared technology and plasmoids during the 60s and
70s, and who was directly involved in a demonstration
of a Soviet laser beam weapon in 1991 for the U.S. Air
Force in Weimar (DDR), told AFP that there is evidence
that a directed-energy weapon using "deep infrared"
radiation was used to bring down the WTC.
Although infrared weapon technology is not widely
discussed in the West, the Soviet infrared beam weapon
is nothing new and was already used during a Soviet
dispute with China in 1969 to destroy "a wall" at the
Ussuri River, which separates Manchuria from Russia's
Far East, according to the physicist.

Infrared radiation is heat-producing and invisible
wavelengths lying between visible light and microwave
on the electromagnetic spectrum. "Near" infrared is
closest to visible light and "far" or "deep" infrared
is closer to microwave. Far infrared waves are thermal
and cause increased molecular vibrational activity. In
other words, infrared radiation is heat.

Israel's Laser Weapon

There are indications, according to the physicist,
that such a weapon was used when the KAL plane was
shot down over Kamchatka (Soviet Union) in September
1983. In the early 90s, this technology returned to
scientific discussions in the West and the technology
itself appears to have been transferred from the
Soviet Union.

Since 1995, the United States and Israel have actively
developed an advanced infrared beam weapon under a
joint "anti-missile" program known as the Tactical
High-Energy Laser (THEL). The THEL is a mobile,
high-energy laser weapon.

Although the THEL laser weapon was designed, developed
and produced by a TRW-led team of U.S. and Israeli
contractors for the U.S. Army Space & Missile Defense
Command, Huntsville, Ala. and the Israel Ministry of
Defense, "requirements for the system have been driven
by Israel," according to TRW and industry reports.
Lasers are the leading edge of directed energy
weapons. Laser weapons have been under active
development for twenty years and easily constitute the
most advanced of the directed-energy devices. In 1984,
Jeff Hecht, author of Beam Weapons: The Next Arms
Race, wrote, "The military 'destructor beam'
definitely is in our future tactical arsenal."
The advanced technology and plasma physics involved in
directed-energy weapons give them unprecedented lethal
power. Among their more important features are:

the
ability to fire energy "bullets" at or near the speed
of light

the ability to redirect their fire toward
multiple targets very rapidly

their very long range and

their ability to transmit lethal doses of energy
in seconds or even a fraction of a second.

No
conventional ammunition is required  only fuel for
the power generator is needed.

The THEL is part of a joint program known as Nautilus,
in which the US Army and the Israeli Ministry of
Defense (IMOD) have developed infrared laser weapon
systems. The prime contractor, TRW Space and
Electronics Group, has been involved in the
development of high-energy laser systems since the
early 1970s. A host of Israeli engineers and companies
are involved in the program including the aerospace
companies Rafael, Israel Aircraft Industries and
Tadiran.

The THEL is a mobile system ostensibly designed to
destroy rockets, such as the Russian-made Katyusha.
The THEL employs the Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical
Laser (MIRACL). The MIRACL is a megawatt-class,
deuterium-fluoride chemical laser. The weapon's
systems can be transported in one or two shipping
containers.

The THEL first successfully destroyed a short-range
rocket in flight on Feb. 9, 1996. As a result, the US
and Israel began joint development of a Tactical High
Energy Laser/Rapid Acquisition Demonstrator (THEL/RAD)
system.

In April 1996, President Clinton and Secretary of
Defense Perry met the then Prime Minister of Israel,
Shimon Peres. During the meeting, the U.S. made a
commitment to assist Israel in the development of a
THEL Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrator (ACTD)
by the end of 1998. Congress gave more than $55
million for THEL development in 1997.
Expense to the U.S. taxpayer and U.S. national
security are apparently not considerations at the
political level when sharing the results of U.S.
weapons development programs with Israel. Nautilus was
offered to Israel in the form of a multimillion-dollar
"research grant."

The funding for Nautilus research was part of a $2
billion military grants package Clinton offered to
Shimon Peres. Israel's access to real-time U.S.
satellite imagery and at least $50 million for
accelerated development of the "Nautilus" laser system
were included in the Clinton package.

"Our commitment to Israel's security is unshakable and
it will remain so because Israel must have the right
to defend itself, by itself," President Bill Clinton,
said as he explained why he was giving Israel an
additional $200 million in U.S. taxpayer money above
and beyond the $5.5 billion aid in U.S. grants and
loan guarantees already given Israel in 1996.
Described as the "the world's first high-energy laser
weapon system," THEL-ACTD reportedly shot down a
rocket with a live warhead on June 6, 2000 at the
Army's High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility
(HELSTF), White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. The
THEL-ACTD is a highly mobile "stand-alone defensive
weapon system" unlike the earlier version.

"Truly Revolutionary Weapon"

"The THEL-ACTD shoot-down is a watershed event for a
truly revolutionary weapon," said Tim Hannemann,
executive vice president and general manager, TRW
Space & Electronics Group.

During the test of THEL-ACTD, an armed Katyusha rocket
was fired from a rocket launcher placed at a site in
White Sands Missile Range. Seconds later, the
THEL-ACTD, located several miles away, detected the
launch with its fire control radar, tracked the
streaking rocket with its high precision pointer
tracker system, then engaged the rocket with its
high-energy chemical laser. Within seconds, the
10-foot-long, 5-inch-diameter rocket exploded.
In a series of two-rocket salvo tests conducted August
28 and September 22, 2000, in the rolling, high desert
of the Army's White Sands Missile Range, N.M., the
THEL/ACTD did twice what no other air defense system
has ever been designed to do: detect, track and
destroy multiple Katyushas in a single engagement.
This weaponry, which is usually described as defensive
in the context of anti-missile applications, can be
mounted on an airplane, ship, land-based station, or
satellite. It can bombard its target with either
beams that will destroy it outright, or by beams of
lesser strength to disable the target's electronics
and cause it to go out of control.

The physicist told AFP, "From my experience as a
physicist and research scientist with the GRU
(Russia's Central Intelligence Agency) I have enough
experience to judge that the WTC towers have been
burning too quickly, too hot, and too completely to
have been caused by the kerosene [jet fuel] fires that
resulted from the crashes. Furthermore, the demolished
buildings nearby [the 47-story Salomon Bros. Bldg.]
are an indication that there was a plasmoid cloud
involved, which probably affected the buildings
nearby."

A plasmoid cloud is a heated and ionized gas that can
be created and projected using far infrared thermal
waves. Plasma occurs when a gas is heated so that some
electrons have been separated from their atoms or
molecules. Ball lightning is considered by experts to
be a plasmoid phenomenon.

The physicist told AFP that he believes that a
plasmoid may have been projected onto the towers
before the planes struck. "The planes may have had a
plasmoid in front of them. Just two or three seconds
before the planes hit the towers, a plasmoid on the
towers would have caused the Faraday cabin effect,
like a car being hit by lightning."

The Pentagon was less damaged by a similar plane crash
and fire because either a plasmoid was not involved or
as the physicist speculated, "the Pentagon is
technically shielded and protected from plasmoids."
"The thermal infrared plasmoid would have raised the
heat of the building. One should examine the videos in
slow motion to see exactly when the fires started. A
plasmoid would have affected the computers in
neighboring buildings, because the plasmoid affects
computers and cannot be targeted precisely," the
physicist said.

If that were the case, another plasma expert says, "it
seems evident that if the object [the plane] is moving
at high speed in the dense lower levels of the
atmosphere, the sudden collapse of the force free
field and plasmoid would result in its thermal
disintegration in a matter of seconds."
The absence of any data from the black boxes is a
further indication of the use of a plasmoid weapon,
according to the physicist.

"Old" Soviet Technology

In 1991, before the Soviet military withdrew from East
Germany, the GRU demonstrated for the U.S. Air Force
Electronic Security Command (AFESC) the capabilities
of its infrared beam weapon by reducing a ceramic
plate into dust from a distance of one mile. This
display of Soviet weapon technology was meant to
impress upon the U.S. Air Force "how a stealth bomber
could be turned into dust in the same way," the
physicist said.

The physicist placed a slightly warmed plate on the
floor of a kitchen in an apartment on the fifth floor,
just below the roof. GRU headquarters in Weimar (DDR),
where the infrared beam originated was less than one
mile away on the other side of the valley and the
second transmitter or reflector was 200 meters away,
with no obstacles between. An infrared beam weapons
requires two sources.

The TV and the oven were turned on and the TV's remote
control was put in the refrigerator. The physicist
left the room and watched the TV screen, which went
black for a few seconds. The physicist left the
apartment for a half hour to allow AFESC personnel to
examine the results.

The plate had been reduced to dust that was difficult
to pick up even with a vacuum cleaner, according
to the physicist. "The plate was not destroyed
suddenly as if hit by a bullet, rather it
disintegrated in a process taking about 15 minutes."
If the WTC had been struck by a similar weapon, than
it is very likely, according to the physicist that one
of the transmitters could have been placed in a high
building nearby or on a moving platform such as a
satellite, plane, or ship, and the reflector, or
second source, on a ship or across the East River.
Some of the pertinent questions that should be asked
to determine if such a weapon was involved in the
collapse of the WTC would be: How long did the towers'
emergency power supply continue to function and had
the computers in the towers been disturbed?